Many thanks Dr. Dickie… for setting the rest of us back even further

There was plenty of media coverage yesterday about Dr. Kenneth Dickie, the plastic surgeon who moved to the Bahamas with his new wife in part to escape child and spousal support obligations. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 (like they often do on child support issues like here because of this) that Mr. Dickie be held accountable and it looks like he is f-cked if he ever returns to Canada.

Thanks for the bad publicity, buddy… there are many of us who are working hard to fix a broken family law system that caused you to bolt. Now, the myth of the “deadbeat dad” is alive and well it is also “top-of mind“. Special interests who lobby hard for the need to have more and more enforcement of child support unnecessarily will use people like you to further their arguments.

On the other hand, from a policy perspective, there is an argument to be made that your departure from Canada, from the lives of you kids, job and friends could be viewed also as evidence that family policy is broken. After all, one measure of a successful policy is the extent to which those who are served and affected by policy comply with it voluntarily.

Dr. Dickie, either you are the ass that those who strategically use the euphemism “deadbeat” want to portray you as, or you discovered what many men themselves affected by family policy have already discovered : that the formula used to calculate child support according to the tables is based on flawed principles that not only make it unaffordable, make it so that it also benefits higher income mothers at the expense of lower income and who really need it. Why? The women’s groups who inputed into the process to create the tables focussed on mostly on themselves and the needs of higher income earning mothers, like lawyers.

Some say this issue is all about the money and to preserve the flow of monies from men to women, often inappropriately.

How are the tables out of whack and what are the signs that this arguably corrupt policy design process created an incentive (or no other choice) for Dr. Dickie to flee the jurisdiction and become a fugative on the run? What would Tie Domi think now that he has felt the intrusiveness of this system?

Here are the top five:

1. Where child support was previously tax deductible for fathers and income for mothers, in 1995, a Supreme Court decision changed this. Rather than making child support tax deductible for fathers and income for children (the intended recipients) which would make it tax free under $8600, the government did a tax grab and shifted the tax burden to fathers squeezing many even further.

2. Where child support is supposed to be for children of divorce to maintain their lifestyles in a way similar to how they would evolve in an intact family, the income of the mother is not taken into account by the child support tables - so the burden of paying for children lies solely on the father even if the mother’s income is higher (except in Quebec where the difference in incomes between mothers and fathers dictates the table calculation which is arguably the correct interpretation of the policy). Furthermore, these monies are paid to the mother who often use it to litigate against the child support paying father to selfishly keep him away from the children.

3. Child support according to the tables does not consider that in divorce families have to increase the number of homes supported by the same incomes from one home to two. Therefore, non-residential parents expenses go up because of the cost of housing, transportation infrastructure, and spending money for activities on weekends when the children will typically visit that is not considered when the table amounts were set.

4. Child support obligations can get in the way of non-residential parents being able to enforce access to their children, since a lack of federal policy makes it so that there is no non-litigious way to enforce access to children where a primary caregiver arbitrarily “denies it“. The cost of bringing a motion or a trial can become inaccessible for many who are already stretched to the limit by artificially high federal child support table figures.

5. While monies spent on litigation to collect child support are tax deductible while monies spent on litigation to enforce access are not. Family Responsibility Offices (FRO) are already there to enforce child support, with the power to remove driver’s licences, garnish bank accounts, incarcerate fathers and now, in Ontario, post the pictures of “deadbeats” on the internet. These same deadbeats (assuming like the State seems to do they are in the highest tax bracket) are paying 1 dollar to the lawyer and 1 dollar to the tax department to enforce access with their children via the courts. There is no institutional support for fathers enforcing access, notwithstanding that the FROs provide free enforcement to those who collect child support, 90% of whom are women.

There are many other indicators of failed and even gender biased policy, but this is not my point. My only other substantive comment is that the only way this case got to the Supreme Court was via advocacy funding from the Status of Women who give money to the Women’s Legal Action Fund (Leaf) to support litigation on issues such as this.

What about the 37.7% of fathers who don’t see their children because enforcing access for many men (with all these child support obligations a need to rely solely on slow, expensive and arguably biased family courts) is simply unaffordable? Proponents of change say there is just not enough money to do everything and financial support paid to mothers trumps relationship support for child/father relationships every time.

Also, with zero funding support from “Leaf” type organizations, is the administration of family policy also gender discriminatory on the basis of who gets funding and who doesn’t? Does the government have a role to play to help men in enforcing the frivolous denial of access by women who do it because the system is broken and they can without consequence? Or, does the State have an obligation to create institutional support to enforce child access much like other institutions previously set up to help enforce child support?

Yes, I am really pissed at Dr. Dickie, but for different reasons than those persons who like to use the words like “deadbeats”. At the same time, I would like to hear from anyone who disagrees that corresponding rules that affect child support (a policy for women because of how custody is awarded) and access (a policy for men because of how custody is awarded) are out of balance.

Is Dr. Dickie is a complete “ass” who deserved to be divorced, shamed, ostracised by society, aliented from his children and also locked up because he is cheap and doesn’t give a "rat’s ass" about his children? Or, were the financial obligations too much? Is it this that forced a man who was once respected and admired to go away in a form of "exile"? Is a system set up by and for wealthy (lawyer) women with access to billions of dollars in advocacy funds to lobby governments too out of balance for persons like Dr. Dickie to live comfortably in Canada?

Readers, you decide ...but please remember, it could also happen to you.